Technique for Soft Bit Scaling

1. A method of determining in a fading channel environment a scaling factor for soft bit quantization, the method implemented by a decoder stage comprising steps of: repeatedly determining a Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) value for the fading channel; calculating a weighted average based on a plurality of the SNR values, wherein the weighting of the SNR values is performed such that contributions of extremal SNR values are attenuated; determining the scaling factor for soft bit quantization dependent on the weighted average; and wherein the weighting is performed by a transformation configured to transform each SNR value into a code rate domain to obtain an associated code rate value, and wherein the method further comprises averaging the resulting code rate values to obtain the weighted average.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein each SNR value is weighted according to an associated achievable channel throughput.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the weighted average is calculated using an Effective SNR Metric technique.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein each code rate value is indicative of an achievable code rate for the associated SNR value.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the code rate value is indicative of a cut-off rate associated with the specific SNR value.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the averaging is performed over one code block containing a predefined number of modulation symbols.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein the averaging is taking into account only a subset of the modulation symbols contained in the code block.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein determining the scaling factor comprises consulting a relationship associating individual weighted average ranges or values with individual scaling factors.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein for each of a plurality of modulation schemes an individual relationship is provided, and wherein the step of determining the scaling factor further comprises selecting the relationship associated with the currently applied modulation scheme.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the method is performed in combination with at least one of a link adaptation scheme and a Hybrid Automatic Retransmission Request (Hybrid ARQ) scheme.

11. A non-transitory computer-readable medium which has an executable computer program product stored thereon, the computer program product comprising program code portions to be processed by a computing device for determining in a fading channel environment a scaling factor for soft bit quantization by: repeatedly determining a Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) value for the fading channel; calculating a weighted average based on a plurality of the SNR values, wherein the weighting of the SNR values is performed such that contributions of extremal SNR values are attenuated; determining the scaling factor for soft bit quantization dependent on the weighted average; and wherein the weighting is performed by a transformation configured to transform each SNR value into a code rate domain to obtain an associated code rate value, and wherein the method further comprises averaging the resulting code rate values to obtain the weighted average.

12. A decoder stage configured to determine in a fading channel environment a scaling factor for soft bit quantization, comprising: a first component configured to repeatedly determine a Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) value for the fading channel; a processor configured to calculate a weighted average based on a plurality of the SNR values, wherein the weighting of the SNR values is performed such that contributions of extremal SNR values are attenuated; a second component configured to determine the scaling factor for soft bit quantization dependent on the weighted average; and wherein the processor is configured to perform the weighting by transforming each SNR value into a code rate domain to obtain an associated code rate value, and to average the resulting code rate values to obtain the weighted average.

13. The decoder stage of claim 12 , wherein the processor is configured to calculate the weighted average using an Effective SNR Metric technique.

14. The decoder stage of claim 12 , wherein the second component comprises a mapping table associating individual ranges or values of the weighted average with individual scaling factors.

15. A decoder stage configured to determine in a fading channel environment a scaling factor for soft bit quantization, comprising a first component configured to repeatedly determine an SNR value for the fading channel; a first processing unit configured to transform each SNR value into a code rate domain to obtain an associated code rate value; a second processing unit configured to calculate an average based on a plurality of the transformed SNR values, and perform a weighting such that in the calculated average contributions of extremal SNR values are attenuated, and a second component configured to determine the scaling factor for soft bit quantization dependent on the average.